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Amsterdam preparing to lower speed limit to 30 kilometers per hour

nltimes.nl

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Re: Amsterdam preparing to lower speed limit to 30 kilometers per hour

#121

Post by rsynnott »

okokwhatever wrote: post #75
jrockway wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ultimately the safest ways to prevent traffic deaths are to redesign the street so that drivers don't feel safe exceeding the speed limit. Amsterdam is certainly working on that, but it takes time to rebuild a street. The speed limit is a nice way of saying "if you're paying attention, you can be safer by doing this thing" while waiting for city-wide roadwork to complete. It's pretty clear to me that automobiles and…

Wow this is so retrograde that I feel I cant answer. To produce insecurity and danger to other human beings without understanding the necessity of moving fast in a crowded place like a city is the most inhuman solution I've heard in a long time. Why not better to create specific and separated fast lanes for those who have to move from one side of the city to the other to have normal lifes like taking kids to the scho…

> Why not better to create specific and separated fast lanes for those who have to move from one side of the city

Amsterdam _has_ a ring road, you know.

Re: Amsterdam preparing to lower speed limit to 30 kilometers per hour

#122

Post by pjc50 »

okokwhatever wrote: post #92
pjc50 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Amsterdam you just take the kids to school in the bakfiets.

Again Amsterdam. Amsterdam is just an example for Amsterdam. Try this in Rome, Buenos Aires, Mexico DC and lets talk again mate. The problem, the real one, is we have cities not prepared for this generation

I mean, the original article is talking about Amsterdam? Which has both natural advantages and a massive head start on bike culture.

Need to get on the public transport building first.

Re: Amsterdam preparing to lower speed limit to 30 kilometers per hour

#123

Post by momirlan »

kmlx wrote: post #72
meheleventyone wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re doing this in Reykjavik as well which is great, although enforcement is poor so on the larger roads that are now 50km/h everyone is still driving 70km/h as they were when the limit was 60km/h. Going back to the UK where a twisty road through my parents village with tiny pavements was 30mph was pretty shocking with how much more dangerous that felt.

from my experience the level of perceived dangerousness is proportional to your most recent experience. drove in the center of Bucharest, Romania, where drivers constantly go over 70kmh (yes through the city center). then drove in London where 20-30mph felt ridiculously slow.

congratulations, you survived driving in Bucharest. your life will be boring after that.

Re: Amsterdam preparing to lower speed limit to 30 kilometers per hour

#124

Post by occz »

okokwhatever wrote: post #101
bobim wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it’s your life it makes a world of difference. Public space is shared space, the car lobby has tricked you into believing it’s primarily for cars, but it’s wrong. Free up your mind, drive slowly, be kind.

Kindness is not a matter of speed. Kindness is a matter of comprehension with a bit of investment into creating cities for everyone. I want cars to be there, maybe it's just me, but why my desires are lesser than yours?

Because your desires kill people. They will rightly continue to be disregarded.

Re: Amsterdam preparing to lower speed limit to 30 kilometers per hour

#125

Post by mcv »

nvm0n2 wrote: post #100
pjc50 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they wouldn't. We're deep into post-evidence politics. In all these cases the decisions have been explained, in the normal place, but that's too boring to share on social media so nobody hears it.

The decisions haven't really been explained by the standards of explanation you might expect for such a move, at least not everywhere. In Wales the official explanation is: Welsh ministers said a 20mph (32km/h) limit would reduce deaths and noise and encourage people to walk or cycle [1]. Drakeford elaborated by saying "It's going to take you a minute longer to make your journey, and we will save 10 people's lives in…

Point 2 is nitpicking. Obviously every trip is different, but a reduction from 30 to 20 mph does not have nearly as big a difference on travel times as your proposal to reduce all the way to 10 or 5 would have.

Everything is a compromise. 30 mph was a bad compromise because it's a deadly speed that will kill people in a collision. 20 mph is significantly safer. Reducing further to 10 mph or even 5 mph would not have a significant further effect on safety in normal traffic conditions, but would have a significant impact on travel times if people have to drive at that speed for a significant part of their trip.

I think it's your complaints that are 100% subjective. There is evidence for these policies. Politicians rarely go into that evidence for public announcements because most people aren't that interested in the evidence, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. You're suggesting that politicians randomly pick some numbers out of the air just to upset people, but the opposite is true; you generally need an excessive amount of evidence to get politicians to do anything at all, especially when it even slightly inconvenience the oil and car lobby. I mean, look at the lack of action to mitigate climate change despite the excessive amounts of evidence.

Re: Amsterdam preparing to lower speed limit to 30 kilometers per hour

#126

Post by pjc50 »

rsynnott wrote: post #120
okokwhatever wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something inside me tells this won't happen everywhere. Real people with problems to pay rent and buy a house cannot afford (like us) live in the center of a city anymore and wont be in the near future. Mandating 30kph everywhere will make people more and more resistant to live in the cities moving out and leaving the center for the hipsters with their avocado toasts. This is gentrification.

... Hold on, making it _less desirable_ (and thus cheaper) to live in cities would be _gentrification_? How's that work? (FWIW I don't agree that this does make it less desirable to live in cities; it will tend to reduce noise and improve the efficacy of the bus system, both of which make living in cities _more_, not less, desirable anyway.) I wouldn't have thought most people living in central Amsterdam have parking…

His argument is that "everybody" would move out, and that somehow this would push "up" prices?? Possibly it's a complaint that the "wrong sort" of people (younger) would move in?

Re: Amsterdam preparing to lower speed limit to 30 kilometers per hour

#127

Post by timrichard »

nvm0n2 wrote: post #100
pjc50 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they wouldn't. We're deep into post-evidence politics. In all these cases the decisions have been explained, in the normal place, but that's too boring to share on social media so nobody hears it.

The decisions haven't really been explained by the standards of explanation you might expect for such a move, at least not everywhere. In Wales the official explanation is: Welsh ministers said a 20mph (32km/h) limit would reduce deaths and noise and encourage people to walk or cycle [1]. Drakeford elaborated by saying "It's going to take you a minute longer to make your journey, and we will save 10 people's lives in…

Yup. Another data point from someone driving in Wales at the moment :

- People seem fixated on their speedometers rather than the road, which isn't great for safety.

- I'm spending way more time in third gear when I would have previously been in fourth, meaning the engine is revving higher, thus consuming more fuel, thus releasing more emissions.

- The rollout has been utterly chaotic. They first released an interactive map, which bore little resemblance to the changes to the speed signs on launch day, and councils are still tweaking the opt-out status of individual roads.

Personally, I think safety goals could have been met by building way more zebra crossings. In my experience, motorists do slow and stop for them, and they would have a natural traffic calming effect at the times when pedestrians need them the most. However, that wouldn't help with bullet point #2 on the Welsh Government website, which is to encourage more people to walk and cycle. Much of Wales is rural, and for those people a car is a necessity rather than a luxury. When I lived in London, many buses were every three minutes. Where I live at the moment, it's two a day on many routes. Regardless, if cycling and walking is the true agenda then they should have had the guts to be open about it. Instead, they hide it behind think-of-the-children, which mainly has big support from people who drive SUVs for the school run. Despite the fact their vehicles are much heavier, ride higher, and have an angular front that would be much worse for anyone (especially children) that they might collide with.

Re: Amsterdam preparing to lower speed limit to 30 kilometers per hour

#128

Post by jwestbury »

thorin wrote: post #19

Wales (UK) did this about a week ago. Setting 20mph as a limit in urban areas. I was there yesterday and now the problem is that it's very unclear where exactly it applies and if it will be enforced. Also satnavs such as Apple and Google maps have not been updated for the new speeds leading to further confusion. There are some areas where this makes sense, but a blanket change seems political. Hopefully it will cause…

> now the problem is that it's very unclear where exactly it applies and if it will be enforced.

Isn't this quite clear in the highway code? If there are no signs, use street lamps -- they're the proxy we're generally given for this.

Re: Amsterdam preparing to lower speed limit to 30 kilometers per hour

#129

Post by jrockway »

okokwhatever wrote: post #75
jrockway wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ultimately the safest ways to prevent traffic deaths are to redesign the street so that drivers don't feel safe exceeding the speed limit. Amsterdam is certainly working on that, but it takes time to rebuild a street. The speed limit is a nice way of saying "if you're paying attention, you can be safer by doing this thing" while waiting for city-wide roadwork to complete. It's pretty clear to me that automobiles and…

Wow this is so retrograde that I feel I cant answer. To produce insecurity and danger to other human beings without understanding the necessity of moving fast in a crowded place like a city is the most inhuman solution I've heard in a long time. Why not better to create specific and separated fast lanes for those who have to move from one side of the city to the other to have normal lifes like taking kids to the scho…

Why is there a necessity to move fast? Things are close together, so the need for speed is actually decreased. If you're willing to tolerate a 20 minute commute, that might be a 1 mile walk in the city compared to a 20 mile drive in the middle of nowhere. It ends up working out; people put stuff close together specifically so that you can easily travel between those places without burning dinosaurs or running over the local children whose ball went into the street!

If you need to cover longer distances, you can likely go slowly towards some sort of transit hub and then take a faster vehicle to your final destination. (This is why people fly instead of drive across the country. In the cities, you can run trains underground and not conflict with anything else going on in the city! Many cities have tried this with great success; the only complaint is not doing enough of it.)

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